As HA says, he transmogrified Anti-Head Alien’s body and outfit to match his latest pre-death look. It’s mostly because I’d grown to dislike the older, shoulderpadded Head Alien design, and didn’t want to have to be stuck with it for the finale. But also because it shows off Heady’s new godlike powers. He’s always been a theatrical bongo, but now he’s a whole theater troupe.

We also see Monkey Master continuing to make decisions re: allegiances. Here he disobeys a direct order and sets Sal down gently.

That’s why Cattleprod specified not keeping his consciousness in the same body with powers was what did Thanos in. IIRC, near the end of the original Infinity Gauntlet storyline, Thanos’s mind ascended to a higher plane of existence…but he left his now-defenseless body, which still had the Gauntlet, behind in the process.

It’s interesting to see how my partially informed knowledge of this strip, from SP! and occasional peeks at the wiki, sometimes misinform my perceptions. There was a certain HA spoiler I assumed had come about because Willis killed off HA prematurely and regretted it. Obviously that was wrong. A related development with another character that I assume happened in IW! clearly must have happened in Joyce and Walky instead. I was wondering how it was going to fit in before the end given how relatively slowly that plotline developed.

I’ll never know how it would have felt to have come to the strip completely clean, but I have to say I enjoy reading it with the level of knowledge I have. It can actually increase my enjoyment when the strip built up in my head varies wildly from the real strip.